1.23 Inscriptions 102
Vicktor dreamed of possibilities. Small grouping of glyphs branched into large interlocking lines which cascaded in endless fractals. He knew it was utter nonsense, but enjoyed how the new learning tickled at his brain.
His dream shifted, the spirals of half-recognized patterns slowly morphed into a pattern woven in the soil of a vast desert. The sun bore down upon his naked shoulders. Shapes and colors emerged from the sand revealing an interconnected sphere of innumerable metal glyphs, rising out of the soil, supported by a pillar of obsidian.
Vicktor moved in the only way one does in a dream, the world shifted around him as he stood, transfixed by the large sphere. He sped closer, his feet still flat on the ocean of sand.
He rose into the air, supported by a single wave of crystalline black sand. Looking down at his shadow revealed two protrusions from his head. Vicktor did not respond, for they had always been there. He reached for the sphere, his hairy, dainty fingers grew closer and closer until finally, he felt the frigid metal of the underside of the inscribed sphere.
It pulled at his mana, it pulled at his very soul. His Ruakh moved, forcing its way out of his chest and down his arm. Vicktor could only watch in a dreamlike horror as a small lump forced its way down his artery. The small lump tearing away flesh as it ascended through his arm, a sacrifice for the device.
It forced its way through his bicep, leaving a ragged tear as fresh blood bulged under his skin, it forced its way through his wrist, splitting the bones with a pop. His arm would not move, it could not move away. He felt a ripping in his hand, tendons splitting as his Ruakh abandoned him. With a final tear, the skin ruptured and--
Vicktor awoke with a gasp, throwing one sweating hand up to his brow and another before his eyes in the dim light. His head and hands were smooth once again. He lay, gasping for air amongst the gentle snores of the barracks. He paused to meditate, the internal flow of mana comforted him.
His pulse slowed. His Ruakh thrummed. His mind slowed. Dreamless sleep took him, a lovely juxtaposition against the earlier terror.
The smell of roasted meat woke Vicktor as it had every morning since his arrival at Allium. As he pulled off the sheets, he once again surreptitiously checked his hands and ran them through his hair. No horns.
Alar was pouring over one of the books from the day before alongside a small notebook. Gylphs and scribbles in a tight scrawl. The owl was so fixated on his notes that he didn't notice Vicktor’s nearly naked form until it was inches away from the book. Vicktor resisted the urge to perform some sort of lurid practical joke. Today was to be a bit more serious, but he did take note of the situation.
'Fun after, Vicktor, fun after'
"Hey there, big guy, ready for a long day?" the avian chirped, surprised at the sudden closeness.
"I hope so, what's the plan for today? I'm in your capable talons" Vicktor responded.
"Food first, then a material depot or smelter. We need to find an ore or rock that allows you to use your fundamental principle on. Something that makes you feel like it's part of something that you can 'construct our foundation' out of."
"Yeah, I can't do refined metals, but plenty of rocks have metals in them. We just need to find something that can be inscribed efficiently but also is moveable. I'm not sure, iron ore maybe?"
"That was my first thought, but let's chat about it over breakfast, I need a sausage in my mouth," Alar said hungrily.
Breakfast was a quick affair, the two scarfed down a handful of browned sausages, a small roll and some chilled tea. They got and ate the food so fast that they didn't have time to discuss the options. They waved to Nora, Bryn, and Zorra before walking towards the reception of the builder's guildhall. Mx. Reshka was not there today, so they spoke with another receptionist, a mundane man with curly black hair and dark skin.
"Hey Sebastian," Alar said, "where does the builder's guild get their construction materials?"
The man was fairly energetic despite the early morning, "Depends what kind of materials you are looking for? Wood? Steel? Concrete?"
Alar gestured to him with a talon, so Vicktor responded. "We are looking for aggregates and where the ore for the smelters comes from."
"Aggregate are mostly excavated as needed from a quarry just outside the southern city gate. Ore is brought into a depot just into the city on the south side. The smelter's located near that edge of the city too."
The two apprentices thanked the man, about to depart when the man offered a final word. "Whatever you're planning, don't use materials from within the city. It doesn't take much effort to go through proper channels. If everyone dug underneath them whenever they felt like it, we'd run out of soil ages ago. Soil runoff isn't to be joked about, the city has to import hundreds of tons of soil to maintain the current grade. Not all of it can be caught by the cities water system."
Vicktor had a thought, then decided to voice it, "Thanks, Sebastian. Where would I need to go to take a tour of the drainage network? I'm not interested in the sewer beast clean-up though."
"Ah, that would be Imperator Warwick, his water treatment plant is on the west side of town, you should go visit. Walking around with my daughter was a blast! It's part of the school curriculum here. We actually went during last winter, it's deep enough where it's not too cold even with the snow covering the ground."
Vicktor smiled. "Excellent, Thanks again!"
As they walked away, Vicktor turned to Alar and asked, "Wait, I guess I could've asked you that. Is it nice? I can feel it sometimes when I'm around, but it's hard to get a good picture of it from above."
Alar responded with a light smile, "Aviankin are actually allowed to visit other infrastructure, ancestral fear of caves. I could've done it, probably, but I decided to visit the belltower instead. A cute bird girl convinced me to go with them."
"Still interested?" Vicktor asked.
"Not since she entered a monogamous relationship with her mate."
"Understandable," then Vicktor thought back to their duel with Team Shallot. "Wait, how badly did I shake you up when I did that thing?"
Alar turned to face him, a somewhat sad expression on his face. "It wasn't that bad in comparison to almost falling to my death and running out of air. I'd like to not be trapped like that again, but I expect it to happen again. Plus, feeling fear is better than never feeling it again, so if you need to do it again, don't hesitate."
"Alright then, thanks for the honesty Alar," Victor said.
"No problem, but lets get back to the task at hand. Getting you some shiny rocks."
The pair started walking again, passing a city that had mostly woken up. Wagon's pulled by Auroch's moved up and down the streets as the denizens of the city began their day. The sun had risen although the shadows from the nearby buildings and shade trees cast long shadows as they walked. It was getting cold, he might need that set of winter robes in a few weeks.
Vicktor spoke up, breaking the small silence as they walked south.
"So, iron is the most abundant ore and comes in a few forms. Almost all of it is going to have a significant amount of impurities, mainly silicates although there are a couple that might be possible to find. Iron ore tends to have a lot of oxygen in it as well"
Alar responded, "In theory, you could use most materials if you don't care about efficiency. We should look for two different kinds of materials for you, iron and something else. Iron really likes to hold onto mana, but getting mana back out is difficult. You should have some around in case you need to make an inscription that absorbs mana, we'll get there later though."
"Ah, okay. What else were you thinking? Copper, silver or gold like what we use in tattooed inscriptions? Is it similar to engravings?" Vicktor asked.
"That's ideal, but they might be too refined for you to actually move around and too expensive to make something large enough without more skill." Alar said.
"I've been practicing my manaclay, it's just super boring so I don't talk about it much. Here."
Vicktor pulled out a simple pouch from a robe pocket. He untied it and let the lump of manaclay out into one hand. With a quick working of intent, the clay condensed into a perfect sphere before flattening as thin as he could make it. He ended up with a sagging disk a bit larger than his entire hand. Thin, but nowhere near paper.
"Couldn't I use the manaclay to make inscriptions?" Vicktor asked.
"Not really, the process to make it manipulable by anyone with mana means that it doesn't really hold onto mana at all." Alar said then continued. "Another good option if we can find it is aluminum, it's often used as a low tier mana vault, it can store mana fairly easily, but it loses about ten percent of storage per hour. Thankfully it mostly just leaks to the ambient mana as opposed to being emitted as light or heat."
"Aluminum ore could work and it's fairly abundant, it's not the main ingredient of concrete but it's often added to speed up early strength."
"Can you manipulate concrete?" Alar asked?
Vicktor paused to organize his thoughts, "sort of. It's much easier when just cement, aggregate, and water, although I don't really move the water. I can manipulate hardened concrete if I have soil to fill underneath it, but I still can't impart a force onto anything that might be standing on it."
Alar cocked his head, "That's really weird, plenty of earth mages can impart forces."
"It's one of the mental tricks that I learned to incorporate within my understanding of my fundamental principle. Most earth mages our tier might expend all their mana trying to raise up just one of those cubic yard pillars."
"Huh, okay. It's quite the restriction."
"Yep, just means I need to stay creative. Also, another one of the tricks I use to make my magic more efficient is to not fight against gravity more than I have to. Any soil I lift up is replaced from the sides and below so that I never have to actively fight it."
The buildings were getting smaller, instead of multistory buildings and warehouses, they were now passing some residential standalone houses. The tall city walls were now much more visible. Unbroken smooth stone that extended fifty feet into the air and a hundred feet below.
Vicktor had done his research before coming here. The Blue Hills were only one of a handful of the bastions of humanity where people lived without city walls, instead choosing to live on wagons.
Rumors about these wandering tribes was that they produced thousands of fearsome Mages and Chosen who advanced further and faster than the stationary cities. It was only partially true and left out several key details.
For one, the rate of Mages and Chosen born was the same as the rest of humanity. About one in fifty for Mages and about one in fifty for Chosen.
The Mages and Chosen of the Blue Hills did advance further and faster, but only because they trained nearly daily as they defended the traveling caravans. They also died earlier and more often.
It was a cultural trade-off that Vicktor disagreed with and its traditions were part of the reason that Vicktor had departed, partially disowned.
The pair neared the smelters, the road was still made of concrete, and to either side of the road were vast assortments of ore. Browns, blue-greens, reds and silver grey all stacked in piles. Rock conveyer belts were pouring ore into some piles as people in metal caps and robes inspected others.
There were no pillars of smoke rising from the chimneys, but huge plumes of heated air rose out of them, twisting and contorting the sky and clouds behind them.
The main gate of the smelter was open and two bored guards were standing at the front, halberds lazily propped on their shoulders. The two were speaking to each other as Alar and Vicktor approached, clearly not going towards the city walls southern gate.
"Name and purpose" The larger, fatter one said.
"Alar, mage of the Builder's Guild. My friend is looking to buy inscription materials.
"Vicktor, mage of the Builder's Guild. And we are specifically looking for ore, not forged metals."
"Hurm, alright. No getting into trouble. I know you think you two are great and powerful, but you are still kids. You look like kids. Mana always goes to your head first, you'd be astounded how often we have to stop children from stealing ore so they can make a hero's blade or mechanical defender. Please ask before moving anything and make sure you pay for everything."
Vicktor was a little annoyed at the guard, but Alar nodded and said, "Will do sir. Nothing interesting from us sir."
***
"Why is it glowing blue!" Vicktor panicked, his staff digging into a small pile of ore that they were testing.
"Just means that there is a lot of oxygen in it, move it into that simple light inscription I taught you."
Vicktor did so, using his intent to have the glyphs form in the small pile. As the small inscription was completed, the blue light of the small pile was immediately dwarfed by a brilliant white. Vicktor flicked on his mage-sight to be utterly disappointed, mana was leaking everywhere, a dull red hue was equal in intensity to the white light. He cut the flow of magic through his staff.
"Fifty percent leakage I'd say." Vicktor was annoyed at the inefficiency, but at least it was only the first sample.
"It did work, and you were able to move it, we can come back to this hematite later if needed."
"Next!" Said a short burly mage, Feldspar was his name. He had been friendly enough when he learned they were from the Builder's guild. Apparently he had apprenticed there many, many years ago.
A young looking man, Sid, pushed a wheelbarrow over. "Bog iron, sir's, from a swamp to the west."
Vicktor put his staff to the wheelbarrow and– nothing. No movement or feeling of control. He shook his head, "not this one, too refined? Not sure."
"Next!" Said Feldspar. Sid brought out another wheelbarrow. This pile had the luster of yellow metal. "Iron Pyrite"
"Fool's gold! Alar, what does sulfur do?"
"Heats up."
"Ah okay, yeah that's unfortunate, let me know if anyone smells anything" Vicktor said.
"What'll happen?" Sid asked. The slender apprentice looked worried.
The Mage Feldspar responded before Vicktor could respond, "If it gets too hot, it'll separate into iron and sulfur, even a little bit can smell awful. It also reacts nastily to water, they'll have to keep it in glass to move it around."
"It's still worth a shot" Vicktor said, using some intent and a touch of mana to easily move a small pile of the iron pyrite to the soil below and forming it into the same series of glyphs. Switching to his mage-sight, he began to look at the pile of golden powder.
To his biological sight, the pile emitted a stronger purer white light, no other obvious intrusion of light like what had been present in the hematite. To his mage-sight, Vicktor saw a steady red glow from the pile. It was more intense than before too.
After a few moments, the air above the pile began to warm and after a few more moments, the pile began to reek. The smell of rotten eggs. Vicktor cut the flow of mana to the inscription. The smell receded away.
"This was more efficient, maybe closer to eighty percent. I think I will try to get a few jars, but ill need something else."
"Alright," Master Feldspar said, "Let's try some more. We have about two dozen more to go."
After several more hours of testing, Vicktor was slightly disappointed in his lack of versatility. Only a few samples of ore responded to his magic in addition to being good materials for inscriptions. He ended up purchasing three kinds of ore.
Fifty pounds of magnetite, which was similar to hematite in chemical structure, but a little bit more efficient. It was given in two tightly bound sacks. Which alar was just able to put into his dimensional storage bag.
Fifty pounds of karst bauxite, which contained primarily aluminum, carbon, and oxygen. When it was infused with mana, it was less efficient than the magnetite, but it had two additional properties. The carbon addition made it glow red light and the aluminum would hold onto the mana allowing for the inscription to work after being charged.
Ten pounds of iron pyrite was put into two large glass jars with venting seals to prevent pressurization of the container. Vicktor would need to carry sixty pounds of ore around with him until he could get a dimensional storage, not a cheap purchase, it would probably take months of his salary to get it.
The two were inside of a test chamber in the smelter. They had paid a little extra to rent the blast-proof room. There were not many good places to practice inscriptions. The pair could have waited to be back into the center of town, and used the Builder's guild facilities, but they were impatient and there was an inter-guild agreement between the two guilds, so the price differences weren't astronomical.
The first few inscriptions were simple, instead of using mana to directly create an outcome, they would try to find the energy some other way.
Each took several minutes to set up, lots of checking, double checking and rechecking the glyphs. Vicktor knew he could get it down to seconds, but that would come with practice.
The first inscription had a similar effect to the simple line of glyphs from when they were testing the ores. Except, it would use mana to pull the surrounding heat energy and convert it into light. It was simple enough, requiring about a pound of the ore.
Putting his staff to the inscription, it glowed, taking up less energy for a similar amount of mana. The second inscription was similar, but instead of ambient heat energy, it took in the ambient mana to produce a light. This light was fairly dim.
The third inscription was a little more complex and was a combination of the first two. It would take in ambient mana and use the ambient mana to pull heat from the magnetite.
Vicktor thought out loud, "We might be able to do something similar with the sulfur, turning the excess heat back into some other effect."
Alar nodded, the avian had been excited the whole day. It was nice to watch the owl talk about his passions. Vicktor had learned so much more than he thought was possible. He felt his understanding of the world ratchet tighter and more cohesive.
Alar spoke with an excited chirp "Alright, second to last one!"
This inscription took much longer, closer to fifteen minutes and required reviewing Alar's notes multiple times, there were close to thirty glyphs that needed to be connected and interconnected. Instead of a pound of ore, it took five pounds and covered a three foot wide circle in the room.
Vicktor placed the tip of his staff to the circle and activated it. Nothing happened except for a small drain on his mana, less than the amount of mana he could from the ambient air. That was good, this was meant to be reactive.
Alar walked forward, a talon outstretched, sweeping in front of him. Once the tips of his sharp claws hovered above the circle. The inscription flared to life, casting blue light up, under lighting the avian's chin.
Alar tried to move his hand, but it wouldn't budge, the glowing of the circle flared with the intensity of Alar's movements. After a few short tests and one large pull, Alar produced his wings and batted against the force with all his might, until he finally was released.
Vicktor was surprised, he had plenty of mana. He looked down and noticed that the inscription was scattered by the wind of Alar's wings.
Alar spoke with a gleam in his moon-sized eyes, "Excellent! That worked really well, any thoughts?"
Vicktor paused, gathering his thoughts, "I think we need to add some way so that you or someone else can't just scatter the inscription, some kind of reinforcement? Also, is there a way to detect if someone is over the top this? it would be really interesting to have this right underneath some sand or soil. They would have no idea what's happening."
Alar hooted with joy, "That will need more time for me to develop it and for you to learn how to work on it yourself. I want you to be just as good as me or better for this kind of thing."
"Maybe," Vicktor said, "but I'm only going to really be able to use rock dust, I won't be able to make any properly engraved things."
"It's a start!", Alar was still happy, "We should absolutely test it out against some constructs, I'll try to book all three of us a session. Maybe she'll be interested?"
Vicktor was unsure, "She hasn't shown interest before, and her magics don't really align with engravings."
"Not true, she will very likely be designing her own tattoo's, that need's a healthy grasp of how inscriptions work, even if it is a little different than an inscribed tattoo." Alar said.
"Oh! Oh right!", Vicktor's mind started imagining Nora a few years out, with a titanic bow, with rippling muscles and tattooed inscriptions all over her face and body.
'I can't wait to see how I can incorporate this into a fight.'